Understanding Sharps ♯, Flats ♭, and Naturals ♮ in Music 

Understanding sharps, flats, and naturals is essential in learning how to read music and understand basic music theory. This article will dive deeply into sharps, flats, and naturals. By the time you're done, you'll know just about everything there is to know about sharps and flats. In fact, you might know too much. 

What are the symbols for sharps and flats?

Let's get this out of the way first. Here's a flat symbol (♭). It looks like a lowercase b. In fact, you'll often see a lowercase b used to represent a flat sign. 

And here's a sharp symbol (♯). This one often gets represented as a hashtag, number, or pound sign. No, not this pound sign £. This one: # 

What are sharps and flats in music?

Sharps and flats are used to name specific music notes. They're also used to describe the action of changing the pitch of a note. 

Sharps and Flats as Note Names

I assume you're already familiar with the musical alphabet; the notes A B C D E F G. Those 7 notes are enough to make 95% of music (as long as we only play in C major). Unfortunately, you'd be limited to C major and A minor. And you couldn't give the song any unique extra color by using chromatic notes. 

Let's take a look at the musical alphabet on the piano keyboard and the guitar fretboard.

Remember, the musical alphabet repeats forever and ever and can start on any note.

Obviously, there are many notes we need to use that are outside the musical alphabet. The black keys on the keyboard and the gaps on the fretboard are the notes that the musical alphabet doesn't give a name to unless we use sharps and flats.

 Here are the keyboard and fretboard with the sharps and flats filled in. 

Common Questions

What Sharps and Flats Do In Music

Sharps and Flats as Actions Words

Sharp and flat describe a change in pitch; they make notes go higher or lower. 

To "sharp" (♯) a note means raising it's pitch. This means that a G♯ is higher than a G. In fact, G♯ is a ½-step higher than G. 

To "flat" (♭) a note means lowering its pitch. A flat (♭) note will be a ½-step lower. 

Another way that the terms sharp (♯) and flat (♭) are used is to describe out-of-tune playing. Here, people do not use sharp or flat to describe a ½-step difference because a ½-step difference isn't out-of-tune, it's an entirely different note!

If someone says, "You're playing the B a little sharp," it means you're playing out-of-tune, and the pitch is too high. You might be playing a note that is supposed to have 440 vibrations per second at 445 vibrations per second. So, to fix this, you need to play a little lower (or flatter). 

How to Read and Play Sharps and Flats in Music

So, we know why we have sharps and flats, how they look, and what they do. Next, we need to learn how to play them. 

To reiterate: A sharped note, such as G♯, is a ½-step higher than its un-sharped version (G). 

To play G♯, first find G, then play the next-highest note. 

Remember:

On Guitar

The guitar is easier to visualize this on, so we'll do that first. Remember that 1 fret = ½ step.

To play G♯ on guitar:

1. Find G
2. Move 1 fret higher.
   

Guitarists: Make sure you move to a higher pitch. That means closer to the body of the guitar, not the ceiling. 

Similarly, to play D♭, find D and move down a ½-step. 

On Piano

The piano is more confusing because some of the keys have two notes that touch them on either (or both) the sharp and flat sides. 

The rule for piano is: If there's a black key, that black key is the next ½-step. The white key is the next ½-step if there's no black key (however, you won't end up using those accidentals very often). 

Below is how you would find C♯on piano.

First, find C. Then, move up a ½ step to C♯

For D♭, do the same thing. Find D, and then move down a ½-step to the black key. 

Now you know sharps and flats and how to play them. But do you know what a natural sign does? Or what an accidental is? Or.... THE BAR LINE RULE?!?

What are Naturals in music?

Naturals are often skipped over when people first start learning about accidentals. Still, they're just as crucial as sharps and flats. Here's a natural: ♮

What do naturals do?

Naturals cancel out a sharp or a flat. You may have sharped D for fun and want to go back to playing it the usual, diatonic way. Or your key signature has some sharps or flats in it, and you want to change those notes to play a chromatic note by using those notes without sharps or flats. 

The natural is how you make that happen. 

How to play a natural

A natural note is just the regular version of the note. The natural symbol is only needed after a sharp or flat is applied to a note. 

So, G♮ is just an instruction to play a regular G. It is not an enharmonic equivalent or a unique name for G. It only means to play a regular ol' G. 

Wait, What's an Accidental?

As you get comfortable with sharps and flats and further learn how to read music and understand theory, you will encounter some vocabulary around sharps and flats that can be confusing. 

Let's start by breaking things down into the Absolute category and the Relative category. 

Absolute

Vocab terms in this section are always the same; it doesn't matter what key you're in or what other notes are being played around your sharps, flats, and naturals. For example, a G♯ is always a G♯. 

• Sharp: higher
• Flat: lower
• Natural: normal

Relative

Vocab terms in this section depend on what key you are performing in (if you don't know what a key or key signature is, think about it as the scale you're using for the song). Throughout this example, we'll use the D major scale as our example scale. 

• Diatonic Notes: The 7 notes of the scale. Depending on the scale, there may be either sharps or flats (but never both) and natural notes. These notes are the ones used to play almost all of the music in the piece. Let's use the example of D major. The diatonic notes in D major are D E F♯ G A B C♯ D (note: everything without a sharp in this scale is a natural note. We don't write out the naturals because they are assumed). 
• Chromatic Notes: Notes that are not in the scale. Using these notes gives the music a lot of color, hence the name chromatic (chroma = color). When using the same D major scale above, G♯ would be a chromatic note because it's not in the scale. 
• Accidentals: Accidentals are the sharps, flats, or naturals applied to a note to make it chromatic. The ♯ we used to make G♯ is an accidental. Similarly, the ♭ on E would be an accidental. Finally, it's essential to realize that a ♮ sign on the F♯ in D major would also be an accidental, because F♯ is a diatonic note and playing an F♮ would be a chromatic note. However, a D♮ wouldn't be an accidental, as D is in the scale (diatonic). 
  • Some people also use accidental to refer to chromatic notes. 
    

You'll play many wrong notes if you don't know the Accidental Rule. 

This crucial rule is tricky to get the hang of but crucially important. In fact, it's one of the most common causes of mistakes for beginners and one of the most frequent places you may see courtesy accidentals in beginner-reader music books. 

1. Accidentals (remember, that's ♯, ♮ , and ♭, depending on the key signature) apply to all notes of the exact same pitch until they are canceled out. 
   1. When I say exact same pitch, I mean exact. Accidentals in one staff do not apply to notes in the other staff (because they are a different pitch). Accidentals in one octave do not apply to notes of the same name in a different octave (because they are a different pitch). (however, the sharps and flats in a key signature do apply to all notes of a certian name... but that's for a different article)
      
2. There are only two things that can cancel out an accidental:
   1. another accidental
   2. a bar line. 
      

Those rules seem simple enough, but they can lead to significant confusion because notes that look the same can be very different. Take the following example:

Here is how that example works. In order:

1. F. No changes to it. 
2. This note is also just F. 
3. F♯. Because of the sharp sign. 
4. This note doesn't have any sharp sign. But it's still sharp! That's because this F was sharp (by the previous note), and that sharp has yet to be canceled. 
5. This note looks precisely the same as the one before it, so surely it must be an F♯, right? Nope! The barline has canceled out the sharp. This note is F. 

And, as confusing as that is, that's an example written for clarity's sake. It is typically much more challenging to keep track of accidentals in actual music because the musical line moves around a lot more. 

It's essential to remember these rules, so I made some music theory memes to help them stick in your mind. 

Now I know how to read accidentals. why do we need them?

This can be broken down into 2 sub-questions. The first (Why don't we give them their own names?) was answered above; using sharps and flats means every key has some combination of the notes A B C D E F and G, which makes reading and understanding music much more manageable. 

The second question is, "Why do we use them in music?"

First, we can use any key when sharps and flats are used to make key signatures. Without accidentals, we're limited to C major and A minor. With accidentals, we can use any key we want. 

Using sharps and flats to create key signatures, we can write songs in B♭ major, G♯ minor, or any key we want. Among other benefits, this range expansion allows us to make the music fit people's voices and individual instruments better. 

When accidentals are used to alter notes in a piece of music, they heighten tension and create an incredibly dramatic feeling. They're often called chromatic notes becayse they add color (chroma) to the music. 

And, for maximum drama, you can combine these two things and change keys in the middle of a piece of music. 

Why are sharps and flats written in front of the note?

By now, you may have noticed that I'm consistently writing the sharp after the note in the text of the article (F♯). However, it appears in reverse order in the actual music (♯F). 

This is because, when reading music (especially sight reading music), the performer must know that they must alter the note before they play it. So, the accidental goes first. Just imagine the disaster of someone playing music for the first time, playing an F, and only then noticing the sharp sign that follows it. 

What are all the Sharps and Flats?

The most common sharps are:

G♯ A♯ C♯ D♯ F♯

The most common flats are

A♭ B♭ D♭ E♭ G♭

But every note has a sharp and flat version. Even though there's no black key for the, there are C♭and B♯, as well as F♭ and E♯. 

What other kinds of accidentals are there?

Oh boy. There's a whole world of accidentals out there that you'll never run into. The most common, by far, is the double sharp (𝄪) and double flat (𝄫), which mean to move two ½-steps rather than one ½ step (If you're good at math, you'll know that means that a double sharp = ½ step + ½ step = 1 whole step). 

There are also microtonal accidentals, although they're scarce. They move the note less than a ½-step (. Now, a half-step is the smallest space between keys on a piano and between frets on a guitar. That means you can't play these on piano and can only play them on guitar using bends. 

Here's a list of double-, quarter-, and three-quarters sharps and flats. 

What is the order of sharps and flats?

When used as accidentals, there is no "order" to sharps and flats; they show up when needed. 

When used in key signatures, sharps and flats appear in the order that they occur in the circle of fifths. That'll be covered in-depth in a different article, but I'll give you the basics here: 

Flats appear in the following order:

BEADGCF

That's easiest to memorize by breaking it in two: BEAD-GCF (the word bead, like a hair bead or a bead of sweat, plus GCF)

Sharps need a slightly more complex mnemonic. I remeber them as BEAD-GCF in reverse.

Sharps appear in the following order:

FCG DAEB

You can use a clever phrase to help you remember the order of sharps. I like "Funky Chickens Get Down At Every Barnyard".

What is the Unicode for sharps, flats, and Naturals?

If you want to type Unicode music symbols in your text as I've been, you can use the following Unicode input

♯: u+266f

♮: u+266e

♭: u+266d

In summary, the rules of sharps and flats. 

Sharps go up, flats go down, naturals revert to the basic note. 

Accidentals persist until the barline. Accidentals do not pass through a barline.

I SAID

Accidentals only apply to a pitch of a specific octave (vs. Key Signatures, which apply to any octave). 

Finally

To fully understand sharps and flats and how to read music, you'll want to check out my guide on how to read music. And, of course, if you're at all worried about forgetting to cancel out an accidental after a bar line (something I hope the memes will help you remember), you could do worse than to know all the different possible bar lines in music, inside and out.